Today we welcome Danni Eickenhorst – President & Digital Strategist with Blank Page Marketing! …And a quick Thank You to our sponsor, TribeBoost! A great way to grow your Twitter audience with relevant and quality people. Learn More Here, and be sure to use Coupon Code “unscrambled” for 15% OFF the first month 😉

After we introduced Danni, we learned that Chris skipped the news item which David had to passive-aggressively remind him about it. Today’s news item featured an article in Wired Magazine where the author just clicked Like on every Facebook post that came up. The result? Both his news feed and his friends’ news feeds got completely overwhelmed and changed.Conclusion: don’t try this at home.

Then we got back to Danni who spoke in some depth about content when it comes to social media. We have talked about content in previous episodes but Danni spoke about the need to generate good quality content, but Danni provided some specific hints and tips about the best kind of content: visual.

When you share content on social media you have to make sure it is consistently good, fresh and visual. To that end, Danni recommends two different websites: canva and easel.ly. Canva is a site which helps you create visual content quickly and cost-effectively without having to hire a full-time designer. Easel.ly helps you create quality visual content but more in an infographic-type format. Indeed, Canva seems to have been a very popular tip among our listeners.

David suggested that the future of social media is going to be visual and emotional: make people feel something powerful and evoke that emotion with visual content. Our guest agreed.

Finally we came to our Tip of the Week: as harsh as it might sound, when it comes to business (including social business) it is important to keep in mind that nobody cares about you. Instead they care about what you can do for them. (This is a bit of a different spin on our regular mantra about knowing your audience and giving them what they want.) So keep that in mind when sharing on social.

Danni Eickenhorst

Danni Eickenhorst is the President of Blank Page Marketing and also serves as an instructor in the Digital Marketing Strategy program at the University of Missouri St. Louis. She has built her career working in small businesses, nonprofits and government entities to raise funds and brand awareness through social and digital media. She now works as a consultant with multiple clients, helping to empower them with the tools they need to amplify their message in a digital world.

In January of this year, she was awarded the Governor’s Inaugural Leadership Award for her social strategy work on the 2013 100 Missouri Miles campaign, which resulted in more than 1,000,000 miles logged on Missouri Trails during the campaign.

Thanks again, Danni!

*and THANKS to all our listeners for tweeting along LIVE with hashtag #unscrambled!

And Thanks again to our sponsor, TribeBoost! (helping you grow your Twitter audience….and be sure to use Coupon Code “unscrambled” for 15% OFF the first month 😉

Quick Note: The written posts of our episodes are an extremely POOR representation of the actual Audio show. Please Listen to get the full effect 😉 It’s simply not humanly possible to capture our weekly “delightful disaster” in words…

This week we talk about content creation vs. curation and the importance of not being an overwhelming nuisance. But first we talked about the news item of the week: someone from AirBnB host who refuses to leave, which she can’t seem to resolve. It’s an important and somewhat scary story worth reading: http://bit.ly/1r79ky8

Ralph spoke at great length about the need to put relevant, consistent content on your social media profile. The question is, how do you do so without adding to the nonstop slew of social noise? Instead you have to spend time to create positive content on social media and not just share other people’s stuff. That just creates too much noise that will ultimately hurt your brand!

Carol Lynn Rivera – Founder of Web Search Social

David suggested that, instead of just posting stuff, you should use social media to talk to people which will create the content and make people more likely to interact with you and your brand. Carol Lynn loved the idea and built upon that.

Teddy, our youngest guest, said that she does not like to use Twitter but likes Instagram and, somewhat surprisingly, Facebook. It was surprising because it is “well-known” that young kids are not on Facebook anymore.

Finally, our tip of the week: bit.ly allows you to create custom-branded URLs to co-brand you on Twitter. You can also use Topsy and Social Mention to listen to conversations.

Ralph M. Rivera

Ralph is a programmer and web developer who is the co-owner and technical genius behind both Web.Search.Social and Rahvalor Interactive, where he’s in charge of keeping his team of programmers, coders and developers on track building custom websites and applications. If you need to make things happen on the web in a way that ties into your big-picture marketing goals, Ralph is the one to do it.

He’s been in the business of creative digital services since the late 1980s. He is also an educator, offering his experience and expertise to businesses as they strive to make sense of the world of online marketing, and he teaches web development to inquisitive young minds at Manhattan College in New York City.

Carol Lynn Rivera

Carol Lynn is a writer, community manager and your go-to person for planning, strategy and ultimately getting your marketing done. As co-owner of both Web.Search.Social and Rahvalor Interactive, she builds WordPress sites, manages social communities, writes for email campaigns, blogs or websites, puts together marketing plans and manages the rest of her creative team of writers, designers and developers. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of Web.Search.Social. She has been in the digital marketing business since 1999 and has professionally studied project management as well as search and social marketing.

Carol Lynn loves reading, writing, sunflowers, cupcakes and being able to work with her husband and business partner, Ralph.

Teddie Mucha

Teddie Mucha – Web Development & Social Media Management with Web Search Social

Teddie is a production assistant at both Web.Search.Social and Rahvalor Interactive where she is quite the Jill-of-all-trades. She helps manage social communities, build websites, create graphics, research, plan and stay organized. When a statistic needs analyzing or a report needs building, Teddie is the go-to person for making things happen.

Teddie loves trying new gluten-free recipes, singing, driving her Prius and anything that comes in the color purple.

Thanks Ralph, Carol Lynn and Teddie!!!

*and THANKS to all our listeners for tweeting along LIVE with hashtag #unscrambled!

And Thanks again to our sponsor, TribeBoost! (helping you grow your Twitter audience….and be sure to use Coupon Code “unscrambled” for 15% OFF the first month 😉

New Media Expo was awesome! Jan. 4-6th, 2014 in Las Vegas, NV. As a content creator and business owner, Chris had fun and learned a ton. Listen as he shares some of the highlights with co-host David.

Of course Chris met up with friend of the show, Dino Dogan, and also attended Dino’s eye-opening presentation on Crowdsourcing Influence. Triberr.com is totally pushing the envelope, actually.

Scott Stratten (of UnMarketing) gave the funniest and most helpful keynote! He encouraged us to do things worth talking about, as well as to focus on what matters – and the nuances of your logo don’t really matter compared to what’s really important to your business or brand. David commented that your “brand” is nothing more than your promise, and your social media can only be as good as your brand.

Chase Reeves (of fizzle.co) was part of a helpful presentation about the structure of producing a podcast show – bits, clocks, working with producers, sound clips, etc.

It may be obvious, but Chris liked the simple idea of talking to your audience, getting to know them and finding out what they actually NEED. Then find a way to give it to them! Ha!

The most high-level keynote was the impressive panel of Noah Shanok (Stitcher), Norman Pattiz (Podcast One), and Leo Laporte (TWiT). They discussed the future of podcasting, which seems bright since Norm, who started Westwood One 30 years ago, recently launched Podcast One which promotes a stable of popular podcasts and boasts “Madison Avenue” advertisers. And Stitcher is already in the dashboard radios of some Ford, GM, BMW, some Mercedes automobiles, and there will be over 4 million stitcher enabled cars in 2014!

Chris had the privilege of meeting Chris Brogan (Publisher of Owner Magazine, New York Times Bestselling author, and more) and was ecstatic that Chris is willing to be a future guest of this show!!!

Chris was also honored to meet, in person, these tremendously inspiring individuals: